October 2015

October 29, 2015

The travel posters adorning the intimate tent, the signature locale of the Big Apple Circus at Lincoln Center, promise trips to Marseille, Lille, Paris, London, and the Orient. Evoking the Roaring ‘20’s, and the modern voyage from the dawn of airplane travel to such conveyances as train and camel, “The Grand Tour” featuring aerialists, acrobats, animals, jugglers, a ringmaster with a booming voice, and two very silly clowns as conductors, this circus is a trip.

October 27, 2015

Michael Moore’s latest satiric film, Where to Invade Next, travels to Finland and Tunisia among other places with a central conceit: countries most Americans wouldn’t imagine to be so advanced are doing some things better than we are, so why not learn from them, and get our s—t together. In a time of presidential hopefuls, many spouting promises they can barely articulate, Michael Moore has a clear plan for correcting many of our ills, like not encumbering our young people with crippling debt as they graduate from college. Like feeding our children in elementary school with lunch plans that teach the etiquette of sitting at the dinner table, as well as what foods are truly healthy. Other countries practice these programs as a matter of course, and maybe we did too, before our highest ideals got hijacked. Case in point, people of my generation got an education for free. Remember those days? It is easy to ponder penciling Michael Moore in for president, but he wouldn’t want the job. He’s having too much fun making movies that make people laugh.

October 26, 2015

Bradley Cooper has been prepping for the role of Adam Jones in the film Burnt from the time he shucked oysters in a New Jersey restaurant back in the day. A kitchen view of the fine food industry, Burnt was demanding of all its actors—Sienna Miller, Daniel Bruhl, Omar Sy, Sam Keeley—they all had to work the kitchen, intoning “Yes Chef” in obedience to the master, and learning the arts of fileting, braising, broiling, and plating to perfection. At a breakfast panel last week at the London Hotel moderated by one of the film’s producers, Mario Batali, the actors talked about finessing these roles, and keeping their weight down in the process, especially Bradley Cooper who was preparing for his Tony-nominated performance in the play The Elephant Man where he went bare chested and gaunt.

October 25, 2015

This is a big week for celebrating “difference.” Sesame Street introduces a new character named Julia. She has autism, and it will be interesting to see how she interacts with Cookie Monster, Elmo, and the rest of the colorful crowd. On HBO, the documentary How to Dance in Ohio, directed by Alexandra Shiva, features a no less colorful group of young teens from Columbus with autism, in the care of clinical psychologist Dr. Emilio Amigo. The three in the forefront, Marideth, Caroline, and Jessica have few filters. They wonder, as perhaps we all do however well we mask our social discomfort: if you want to say hello to a boy, how do you do that? The answer is not so mysterious: you say hello. And by the end of the documentary, which features a dance and a contest for king and queen, you cheer for the winners, and for the simple triumphs of being fully alive.

October 21, 2015

Exploding buildings and passions define the fight for women’s right to vote in Britain in the early 20th century. The new movie Suffragette tells that story in a thrilling, action-packed all women production, starring Carey Mulligan as Maude Watts, a laundry worker, mother and wife. Radicalized by the rhetoric of activists including pharmacist Edith Ellyn (Helena Bonham Carter), fellow worker Violet Miller (Anne-Marie Duff), under the leadership of Emmeline Pankhurst (Meryl Streep), Maude Watts is compelled to violence in the streets, yes, but just watch her up close wielding a hot iron. While none of the actors showed up for a grand lunch at Locanda Verde in the movie’s honor, the director Sarah Gavron, producer Alison Owen, scriptwriter Abi Morgan, and Pankhurst’s great granddaughter Helen Pankhurst spoke on a panel moderated by Marie Brenner, about the filmmaking and why this film is relevant now.

October 20, 2015

Wildly wacky and whimsical, Sister Follies: Between Two Worlds, rests on a singular, spectacular conceit. For the centennial of the Abrons Arts Center, a gem of a theater on the Lower East Side, Basil Twist, winner of a recent MacArthur Prize, imagined the ghosts of the Lewisohn sisters, performers and patrons of the arts from 1915. As the curtain opens, the sisters fly, circling one another, bickering competitively as only sisters can do. Their images also are also projected onto the proscenium where they continue their sibling rivalry and narrate. Joey Arias and Julie Atlas Muz inhabit these roles on the ground, performing “Jephthah’s Daughter” and other avantgarde performances from that time. Jonothon Lyons, an actor with amazing pecs, and a cast of puppets, Basil Twist's métier, complete the sensational scene, an assemblage from the Bible.

October 16, 2015

For his Café Carlyle debut performance, vocalist Kurt Elling celebrates Frank Sinatra’s centennial with “Elling Swings Sinatra.” Backed by a wonderful band, maybe the largest I’ve ever seen work this room, featuring Clark Sommers on bass, arranger John McLean on guitar, Jared Schonig on drums, Wayne Tucker on trumpet, Troy Roberts on tenor sax, and Gary Versace on piano, Elling swings his way through such familiar hits as “Come Fly with Me,” “In the Still of the Night,” and “Nice & Easy,” sprinkling the lyrics with scat, the songs with useful information. “Frank Sinatra is the #5 top selling jazz vocalist of all time,” he informs the attentive crowd, quipping, “Do you know how depressing that is for me?” He performs a dozen great songs, but avoids one: “Who else can sing “My Way” but Frank Sinatra?

October 15, 2015

The most terrifying movie of the season does not involve aliens, ghouls, or men in hooded masks. It is the movie Room, from Emma Donoghue’s screenplay based on her best-selling novel, showing moments of tender love between a mother and young son in a small cell-like shed with only a skylight to the outside: the claustrophobia is contagious. Played to perfection by Brie Larson and Jacob Tremblay, under Lenny Abrahamson’s excellent direction, the mother and son, form a bond essential to their survival. The acting is formidable, and will be noted during award season. Last weekend, Room won the Hamptons International Film Festival Audience Award for Narrative Feature.

October 13, 2015

The Maidstone in East Hampton was party central for the Hamptons International Film Festival, both scheduled and spontaneous. Caterer Janet O’Brien, supplying the Guild Hall green room with goodies of cheeses and figs, spoke about partying late into the night at the Maidstone, sipping the Bedell win“es. On Sunday morning, the dining room was locus of a HIFF institution: brunch celebratingThe Variety 10 to Watch,” a program for young actors, mentored by Emily Blunt, herself a “rising star” from a previous version of the same program. Now of course, Blunt has risen: (see The Devil Wears Prada, and the recent action thriller Sicario). Bel Powley (noted for The Diary of a Teenage Girl and her latest A Royal Night Out) and Christopher Abbott (HBO’s Girls and James White) are among this year’s most looked at actors. In previous years, Dane DeHaan, Alicia Vikander, and Adam Driver occupied that spot, and look how they turned out.